


Shattered

by paintingfire



Category: X Factor RPF
Genre: Choose Your Own Adventure, Consensual Kink, M/M, Pain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-20
Updated: 2011-11-20
Packaged: 2017-10-26 08:41:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/280992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paintingfire/pseuds/paintingfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"A need to inflict pain, or to be pain?</p><p>The line is so fine it's maybe non-existent, but Matt's body is tensed and ready, begging you to cross it and you need to feel something, something real.</p><p>Biting down on your own fists, teeth gnawing all the mixed up emotions into and out of each knuckle one at a time. Love, hate, pain, pleasure. Love, hate, pain, pleasure. Finally breaking up the already shattered stars that the lines in your skin formed over your joints. Your light was switched off tonight, but Matt's is fading too and you can't allow that."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shattered

**Author's Note:**

  * For [comeoutcomeout](https://archiveofourown.org/users/comeoutcomeout/gifts).



> Back when I wrote this on LJ I'd asked for a really simple prompt so I could do my layered word painting thang, and comeoutcomeout suggested "knuckles" and this was the result.
> 
> Oh and due to said layers in this I haven't a clue how to tag this fic here. Let the reader decide.
> 
> Update: Am going to try and tag this a bit, but it's actually up to the reader which layer they want to focus on. It's purposefully open to interpretation what exactly is going on ;D
> 
> Disclaimer: I am a mere storyteller, a painter of words. I have no secret mind-reading powers. The characterisations of the people and portrayal of events within the following story are therefore wholly fictitious. A fairytale begins "Once upon a time" but it does not mean it really happened. Remember that and we'll all live happily ever after!

****  
_Love the man. Hate the game. You need the Pain to feel Pleasure again._

Trying to cling on, wanting to be pushed over the edge, bottled out, beer stain weeping down and around. Fists smashed hard to brick, broken body hanging on the wall. Grazed raw, naked and wanting.

Wanting to take Aiden's pain, crying out in need, frightened it won't happen.

He moves over behind you, presses himself hard against you, splintering you against the now framed fragments of your ever growing frustration. It's not enough though, not nearly enough. You feel still wet eyelids scrunched tightly against your neck, but heat as well as defeat radiates from him, his need to possess. You blind your eyes in solidarity, feel the answering cold despair silently seep out once more, your need for his warmth, your need to surrender.

 _Pain must defeat pain or neither of you will survive this waking nightmare._

You remove a single wailing hand from the wall. The wall that is one fourth of your sanctuary as a couple but from tomorrow will be repainted as one fourth of your lonely prison. Dull Matt instead of Maiden Gloss.

You reach behind your head and grab his hair hard, tearing at it but leaving it rooted, the strands cutting through your punch-drunk knuckles. You scrape them back and forth, wishing it was thin sharp wire that would really cut and slice, instead the broken skin does nothing more than catch and snarl.

But Aiden catches too, and then snarls. It's enough for him, a start. Something to react to, to hit out at. To make him come alive again.

=+=

 _A need to inflict pain, or to be pain?_

The line is so fine it's maybe non-existent, but Matt's body is tensed and ready, begging you to cross it and you need to feel _something_ , something real.

Biting down on your own fists, teeth gnawing all the mixed up emotions into and out of each knuckle one at a time. Love, hate, pain, pleasure. Love, hate, pain, pleasure. Finally breaking up the already shattered stars that the lines in your skin formed over your joints. Your light was switched off tonight, but Matt's is fading too and you can't allow that.

You step back enough, just enough to take your stance. Bare, fighting. Your first fist marries with Matt's, then yanks at your own hair even more strongly than his, both your hands trapped to your own head, knuckle to knuckle. Rocking them, cracking them in to position, curled fingers, bony bleeding spurs, locked together. You hiss, Matt moans and stretches his own neck back trying to push his head down more against yours to increase the pressure, to increase the pain.

You twist and bite at the top of his spine, uncaring that the skin is not quite loose enough to provide real purchase, letting your teeth scrape and tenderise, gouging channels. Then replace hard smooth teeth with your untrapped torn velvet fist, a perfect fit to the notches in Matt's spine, to the space between his ribs, to his hipbone...

=+=

Aiden punches, presses, twists and grinds each knuckle hard into you. Love, hate, pain, pleasure. Fusing your bones together for an agonising instant, pinching deeply at nerves, proving to you that they still exist. Your closed eyes can see the ghosted impressions left, and see the bruising flesh reborn in their place, and it makes you cry out for more. He keeps on moving his fist down and round, at a growing pace, a determined pace, a pace that leaves behind a spreading heat like never before. A broken cord mended, life flowing through it once more.

The familiar sharp edge of your hipbone stills Aiden's hand, his thumb breaking fist to press home to one particular spot. The bolt it sends burns through your body then up to your throat, choking you, leaving you jerking, neck breaking once more. Your hand in his hair involuntarily opens, then tightens it's deathly grip but his hand has come and gone, no longer headed but hipped. Both his hands now pressing and pinching and pummeling, snapping you back against him then slamming you into the unforgiving wall.

Aiden's whole body a fist, yours an open palm, sparring partners knowing exactly what they're doing, why they're doing it, and that Aiden will win, so you'll win too. My god you'll win too as you'll have the bruises to prove it. Bruises that will stay with you after Aiden's gone. And before he goes the next day, after you've frantically kissed and shared words of love for the millionth time, you'll both gently wipe each other's tears with grazed knuckles just to make sure you rub salt into your wounds. You need that, you deserve that, _they_ can't take that away from you.

=+=

Elsewhere in the house the contestants are trying to go around their business as usual. Pretending everything is normal, but something gives away the lie.

The hand clasped round a mug, the hand holding a book, the hand holding the games controller, the hand on the arm of the chair, the hand on the arm of fellow boy band member, the hand wrapped round a mobile, the hand to the head. All the hands, even the ones doing nothing at all, and especially hers - the one who feels responsible, who feels everyone is looking at her.

They all have knuckles shocked white against tensely screaming red.

Shocked and screaming because it sounds as if Matt and Aiden are dying up there, and maybe they are. But they're dying so they can live...


End file.
